momentary will of the majority. Its political ability can only be judged according to the skill with which it understands how either to adapt itself to the will of the majority or to pull the majority over to its side. Thereby it sinks from the heights of real government to the level of a beggar confronting the momentary majority. Indeed, its most urgent task becomes nothing more than either to secure the favor of the existing majority, as the need arises, or to form a majority with more friendly inclinations. If this succeeds, it may ‘govern’ a little while longer; if it doesn’t succeed, it can resign. The soundness of its purposes as such is beside the point.

For practical purposes, this excludes all responsibility To what consequences this leads can be seen from a few simple considerations:

The internal composition of the five hundred chosen representatives of the people, with regard to profession or even individual abilities, gives a picture as incoherent as it is usually deplorable. For no one can believe that these men elected by the nation are elect of spirit or even of intelligence ! It is to be hoped that no one will suppose that the ballots of an electorate which is anything else than brilliant will give rise to statesmen by the hundreds. Altogether we cannot be too sharp in condemning the absurd notion that geniuses can be born from general elections. In the first place, a nation only produces a real statesman once in a blue moon and not a hundred or more at once; and in the second place, the revulsion of the masses for every outstanding genius is positively instinctive. Sooner will a camel pass through a needle’s eye than a great man be ‘ discovered’ by an election. In world history the man who really rises above the norm of the broad average usually announces himself personally.

As it is, however, five hundred men, whose stature is to say the least modest, vote on the most important affairs of the nation, appoint governments which in every single case and in every special question have to get the approval of the exalted assembly, so that policy is really made by five hundred.

And that is just what it usually looks like.

But even leaving the genius of these representatives of the people aside, bear in mind how varied are the problems awaiting attention, in what widely removed fields solutions and decisions must be made, and you will realize how inadequate a governing institution must be which transfers the ultimate right of decision to a mass assembly of people, only a tiny fraction of which possess knowledge and experience of the matter to be treated. The most important economic measures are thus submitted to a forum, only a tenth of whose members have any economic education to show. This is nothing more nor less than placing the ultimate decision in a matter in the hands of men totally lacking in every prerequisite for the task.

The same is true of every other question. The decision is always made by a majority of ignoramuses and incompetents, since the composition of this institution remains unchanged while the problems under treatment extend to nearly every province of public life and would thereby presuppose a constant turn­over in the deputies who are to judge and decide on them, since it is impossible to let the same persons decide matters of transportation as, let us say, a question of high for eign policy. Otherwise these men would all have to be universal geniuses such as we actually seldom encounter once in centuries. Unfortunately we are here confronted, for the most part, not with ‘thinkers,’ but with dilettantes as limited as they are conceited and infiated, intellectual demimonde of the worst sort. And this is the source of the often incomprehensible frivolity with which these gentry speak and decide on things which would require careful meditation even in the greatest minds. Measures of the gravest significance for the future of a whole state, yes, of a nation, are passed as though a game of schafDopf or tarock,l which would certainly be better suited to their abilities, lay on the table before them and not the fate of a race.

Yet it would surely be unjust to believe that all of the deputies in such a parliament were personally endowed with so little sense of responsibility.

No, by no means.

But by forcing the individual to take a position on such questions completely ill­suited to him, this system gradually ruins hus character. No one will summon up the courage to declare: Gentlemen, I believe we understand nothing about this matter I personally certainly do not.’ (Besides, this would change mat ters little, for surely this kind of honesty would remain totally unappreciated, and what is more, our friends would scarcely allow one honorable jackass to spoil their whole game.) Anyone with a knowledge of people will realize that in such an illustrious company no one is eager to be the stupidest, and in certain circles honesty is almost synonymous with stupidity Thus, even the representative who at first was honest is thrown end page 89 Page 90 into this track of general falsehood and deceit. The very conviction that the non­participation of an individual in the business would in itself change nothing kills every honorable impulse which may rise up in this or that deputy. And finally, moreover, he may tell himself that he personally is far from being the worst among the others, and that the sole effect of his collaboration is perhaps to prevent worse things from happening.

It will be objected, to be sure, that. though the individual deputy possesses no special understanding in this or that matter, his position has been discussed by the fraction which directs the policy of the gentleman in question, and that the fraction has its special committees which are more than adequately enlightened by experts anyway.

At first glance this seems to be true. But then the question arises: Why are five hundred chosen when only a few possess the necessary wisdom to take a position in the most important matters?

And this is the worm in the apple!

It is not the aim of our present­day parliamentarianism to constitute an assembly of wise men, but rather to compose a band of mentally dependent nonentities who are the more easily led in certain directions, the greater is the personal limitation of the individual. That is the only way of carrying on party politics in the malodorous present­day sense. And only in this way is it possible for the real wirepuller to remain carefully in the background and never personally be called to responsibility. For then every decision, regardless how harmful to the nation, will not be set to the account of a scoundrel visible to all, but will be unloaded on the shoulders of a whole fraction.

And thereby every practical responsibility vanishes. For responsibility can lie only in the obligation of an individual and not in a parliamentary bull session.

Such an institution can only please the biggest liars and sneaks of the sort that shun the light of day, because it is inevitably hateful to an honorable, straightforward man who welcomes personal responsibility.

And that is why this type of democracy has become the instrument of that race which in its inner goals must shun the light of day, now and in all ages of the future. Only the Jew can praise an institution which is as dirty and false as he himself.

Juxtaposed to this is the truly Germanic democracy characterized by the free election of a leader and his obligation fully to assume all responsibility for his actions and omissions. In it there is no majority vote on individual questions, but only the decision of an individual who must answer with his fortune and his life for his choice.

If it be objected that under such conditions scarcely anyone would be prepared to dedicate his person to so risky a task, there is but one possible answer:

Thank the Lord, Germanic democracy means just this: that any old climber or moral slacker cannot rise by devious paths to govern his national comrades, but that, by the very greatness of the responsibility to be assumed, incompetents and weaklings are frightened off.

But if, nevertheless, one of these scoundrels should attempt to sneak in, we can find him more easily, and mercilessly challenge him: Out, cowardly scoundrel! Remove your foot, you are besmirching the steps; the front steps of the Pantheon of history are not for sneak­thieves, but for heroes!

I had fought my way to this conclusion after two years attendance at the Vienna parliament.

After that I never went back.

The parliamentary regime shared the chief blame for the weakness, constantly increasing in the past few years, of the Habsburg state. The more its activities broke the predominance of the Germans, the more the country succumbed to a system of playing off the nationalities against one another. In the Reichsrat itself this was always done at the expense of the Germans and thereby, in the last analysis, at the expense of the Empire; for by the turn of the century it must have been apparent even to the simplest that the monarchy’s force of attraction would no longer be able to withstand the separatist tendencies of the provinces.

On the contrary.

The more pathetic became the means which the state had to employ for its preservation, the more the general contempt for it increased. Not only in Hungary, but also in the separate Slavic provinces, people began to identify themselves so little with the common monarchy that they did not regard its weakness as their own disgrace. On the contrary, they rejoiced at such symptoms of old age; for they hoped more for the Empire’s death than for its recovery.

In parliament, for the moment, total collapse was averted by undignified submissiveness and acquiescence at every extortion, for which the German had to pay in the end; and in the country, by most skillfully playing off the different peoples against each other. But the general line of development was nevertheless directed against the Germans. Especially since Archduke Francis Ferdinand became heir apparent and began to enjoy a certain influence, there began to be some plan and order in the policy of Czechization from above. With all possible means, this future ruler of the dual monarchy tried to encourage a policy of deGermanization, to advance it himself or at least to sanction it. Purely German towns, indirectly through government official dom, were slowly but steadily pushed into the mixed­language danger zones. Even in Lower Austria this process began to make increasingly rapid progress, and many Czechs considered Vienna their largest city.

The central idea of this new Habsburg, whose family had ceased to speak anything but Czech (the Archduke’s wife, a former Czech countess, had been morganatically married to the Princeshe came from circles whose anti­German attitude was traditional), was gradually to establish a Slavic state in Central Europe which for defense against Orthodox Russia should be placed on a strictly Catholic basis. Thus, as the Habsburgs had so often done before, religion was once again put into the service of a purely political idea, and what was worse­at least from the German viewpoint­of a catastrophic idea.

The result was more than dismal in many respects. Neither the House of Habsburg nor the Catholic Church received the expected reward.

Habsburg lost the throne, Rome a great state.

For by employing religious forces in the service of its political considerations, the crown aroused a spirit which at the outset it had not considered possible.

In answer to the attempt to exterminate the Germans in the old monarchy by every possible means, there arose the PanGerman movement in Austria.

By the eighties the basic Jewish tendency of Manchester liberalism had reached, if not passed, its high point in the monarchy. The reaction to it, however, as with everything in old Austria, arose primarily from a social, not from a national standpoint. The instinct of self­preservation forced the Germans to adopt the sharpest measures of defense. Only secondarily did economic considerations begin to assume a decisive influence. And so, two party formations grew out of the general political confusion, the one with the more national, the other with the more social, attitude, but both highly interesting and instructive for the future.

After the depressing end of the War of 1866, the House of Habsburg harbored the idea of revenge on the battlefield. Only the death of Emperor Max of Mexico, whose unfortunate expedition was blamed primarily on Napoleon III and whose abandonment by the French aroused general indignation, prevented a closer collaboration with France. Habsburg nevertheless lurked in wait. If the War of 1870­71 had not been so unique a triumph, the Vienna Court would probably have risked a bloody venture to avenge Sadowa. But when the first amazing and scarcely credible, but none the less true, tales of heroism arrived from the battlefields, the ‘wisest’ of all monarchs recognized that the hour was not propitious and put the best possible face on a bad business.

But the heroic struggle of these years had accomplished an even mightier miracle; for with the Habsburgs a change of position never arose from the urge of the innermost heart, but from the compulsion of circumstances. However, the German people of the old Ostmark were swept along by the Reich’s frenzy of victory, and looked on with deep emotion as the dream of their fathers was resurrected to glorious reality.

For make no mistake: the truly German­minded Austrian had, even at Koniggratz, and from this time on, recognized the tragic but necessary prerequisite for the resurrection of a Reich which would no longer be­and actually was not­afflicted with the foul morass of the old Union. Above all, he had come to understand thoroughly, by his own suffering, that the House of Habsburg had at last concluded its historical mission and that the new Reich could choose as Emperor only him whose heroic convictions made him worthy to bear the ‘Crown of the Rhine.’ But how much more was Fate to be praised for accomplishing this investiture in the scion of a house which in Frederick the

Great had given the nation a gleaming and eternal symbol of its resurrection.

But when after the great war the House of Habsburg began with desperate determination slowly but inexorably to exterminate the dangerous German element in the dual monarchy (the inner convictions of this element could not be held in doubt), for such would be the inevitable result of the Slavization policy­ the doomed people rose to a resistance such as modern German history had never seen.

For the first time, men of national and patriotic mind became rebels.

Rebels, not against the nation and not against the state as such, but rebels against a kind of government which in their conviction would inevitably lead to the destruction of their own nationality.

For the first time in modern German history, traditional dynastic patriotism parted ways with the national love of fatherland and people.

The Pan­German movement in German­Austria in the nineties is to be praised for demonstrating in clear, unmistakable terms that a state authority is entitled to demand respect and protection only when it meets the interests of a people, or at least does not harm them.

There can be no such thing as state authority as an end in itself, for, if there were, every tyranny in this world would be unassailable and sacred.

If, by the instrument of governmental power, a nationality is led toward its destruction, then rebellion is not only the right of every member of such a people­it is his duty.

And the question­when is this the case?­is decided not by theoretical dissertations, but by force and­results.

Since, as a matter of course, all governmental power claims the duty of preserving state authority­regardless how vicious it is, betraying the interests of a people a thousandfold­the national instinct of self­preservation, in overthrowing such a power and achieving freedom or independence, will have to employ the same weapons by means of which the enemy tries to maintain his power. Consequently, the struggle will be carried on with ‘legal’ means as long as the power to be overthrown employs such means; but it will not shun illegal means if the oppressor uses them.

In general it should not be forgotten that the highest aim of human existence is not the preservation of a state, let alone a government, but the preservation of the species.

And if the species itself is in danger of being oppressed or utterly eliminated, the question of legality is reduced to a subordinate role. Then, even if the methods of the ruling power are alleged to be legal a thousand times over, nonetheless the oppressed people’s instinct of self­preservation remains the loftiest justification of their struggle with every weapon.

Only through recognition of this principle have wars of liberation against internal and external enslavement of nations on this earth come down to us in such majestic historical examples.

Human law cancels out state law.

And if a people is defeated in its struggle for human rights, this merely means that it has been found too light in the scale of destiny for the happiness of survival on this earth. For when a people is not willing or able to fight for its existence­ Providence in its eternal justice has decreed that people’s end.

The world is not for cowardly peoples.

How easy it is for a tyranny to cover itself with the cloak of socalled ‘legality’ is shown most clearly and penetratingly by the example of Austria.

The legal state power in those days was rooted in the antiGerman soil of parliament with its non­German majorities­ and in the equally anti­German ruling house. In these two factors the entire state authority was embodied. Any attempt to change the destinies of the German­Austrian people from this position was absurd. Hence, in the opinions of our friends the worshipers of state authority as such and of the ‘legal’ way, all resistance would have had to be shunned, as incompatible with legal methods. But this, with compelling necessity, would have meant the end of the German people in the monarchy­and in a very short time. And, as a matter of fact, the Germans were saved from this fate only by the collapse of this state.

The bespectacled theoretician, it is true, would still prefer to die for his doctrine than for his people.

Since it is men who make the laws, he believes that they live for the sake of these laws.

The Pan­German movement in Austria had the merit of completely doing away with this nonsense, to the horror of all theoretical pedants and other fetish­worshiping isolationists in the government.

Since the Habsburgs attempted to attack Germanism with all possible means, this party attacked the ‘exalted’ ruling house itself, and without mercy. For the first time it probed into this rotten state and opened the eyes of hundreds of thousands. To its credit be it said that it released the glorious concept of love of fatherland from the embrace of this sorry dynasty.

In the early days of its appearance, its following was extremely great, threatening to become a veritable avalanche. But the success did not last. When I came to Vienna, the movement had long been overshadowed by the Christian Social Party which had meanwhile attained power­and had indeed been reduced to almost complete insignificance.

This whole process of the growth and passing of the Pan­German movement on the one hand, and the unprecedented rise of the Christian Social Party on the other, was to assume the deepest significance for me as a classical object of study.

When I came to Vienna, my sympathies were fully and wholly on the side of the Pan­German tendency.

That they mustered the courage to cry ‘Loch Hohenzollern’ impressed me as much as it pleased me; that they still regarded themselves as an only temporarily severed part of the German Reich, and never let a moment pass without openly attesting this fact, inspired me with joyful confidence; that in all questions regarding Germanism they showed their colors without reserve, and never descended to compromises, seemed to me the one still passable road to the salvation of our people; and I could not understand how after its so magnificent rise the movement should have taken such a sharp decline. Even less could I understand how the Christian Social Party at this same period could achieve such immense power. At that time it had just reached the apogee of its glory.

As I set about comparing these movements, Fate, accelerated by my otherwise sad situation, gave me the best instruction for an understanding of the causes of this riddle.

I shall begin my comparisons with the two men who may be regarded as the leaders and founders of the two parties: Georg von Schonerer and Dr. Karl Lueger.

From a purely human standpoint they both tower far above the scope and stature of so­called parliamentary figures. Amid the morass of general political corruption their whole life remained pure and unassailable. Nevertheless my personal sympathy lay at first on the side of the Pan­German Schonerer, and turned only little by little toward the Christian Social leader as well. Compared as to abilities, Schonerer seemed to me even then the better and more profound thinker in questions of principle. He foresaw the inevitable end of the Austrian state more clearly and correctly than anyone else. If, especially in the Reich, people had paid more attention to his warnings against the Habsburg monarchy, the calamity of Germany’s World War against all Europe would never have occurred.

But if Schonerer recognized the problems in their innermost essence, he erred when it came to men.

Here, on the other hand, lay Dr. Lueger’s strength.

He had a rare knowledge of men and in particular took good care not to consider people better than they are. Consequently, he reckoned more with the real possibilities of life while Schonerer had but little understanding for them. Theoretically speaking, all the Pan­German’s thoughts were correct, but since he lacked the force and astuteness to transmit his theoretical knowledge to the masses­that is, to put it in a form suited to the receptivity of the broad masses, which is and remains exceedingly limited­all his knowledge was visionary wisdom, and could never become practical reality.

And this lack of actual knowledge of men led in the course of time to an error in estimating the strength of whole movements as well as age­old institutions.

Finally, Schonerer realized, to be sure, that questions of basic philosophy were involved, but he did not understand that only the broad masses of a people are primarily able to uphold such well­nigh religious convictions.

Unfortunately, he saw only to a limited extent the extra­ordinary limitation of the will to fight in so­called ‘bourgeois’ circles, due, if nothing else, to their economic position which makes the individual fear to lose too much and thereby holds him in check.

And yet, on the whole, a philosophy can hope for victory only if the broad masses adhere to the new doctrine and declare their readiness to undertake the necessary struggle.

From this deficient understanding of the importance of the lower strata of the people arose a completely inadequate con­ception of the social question.

In all this Dr. Lueger was the opposite of Schonerer.

His thorough knowledge of men enabled him to judge the possible forces correctly, at the same time preserving him from underestimating existing institutions, and perhaps for this very reason taught him to make use of these institutions as instruments for the achievement of his purposes.

He understood only too well that the political fighting power of the upper bourgeoisie at the present time was but slight and inadequate for achieving the victory of a great movement. He therefore laid the greatest stress in his political activity on winning over the classes whose existence was threatened and therefore tended to spur rather than paralyze the will to fight. Likewise he was inclined to make use of all existing implements of power, to incline mighty existing institutions in his favor, drawing from these old sources of power the greatest possible profit for his own movement.